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The views expressed here are the personal views of the participants and are not necessarily the views of their organisations. The following people were present at this mindstretch®:
Gary started the meeting by setting the context for the discussion, saying that this was the second time the mindstretch® session has been on culture; on the first occasion, the focus was academic. For this session, we were looking at the organisational pursuit of high performance culture, with the aim of generating as much discussion as possible.
After introductions, Gary began the debate by noting if high performance, high commitment and high involvement were used as though they were synonymous. He also wondered whether high performance was to do with organisations or people, and also said that he thought that the definition of high performance might depend on what part of an organisation was involved – high performance in a packaging plant would look different from high performance in R&D.
Vanessa asked to go back to basics – people struggle with performance, let alone the definition of “high”. Chris felt that often high performance was defined by the need to achieve targets, set by the CEO. There was also the issue of timescales – targets are pursued short term, quarter by quarter, which would have an impact on the idea of longevity in performance.
Karen suggested that the definition of high performance, a bit like objective setting, would be based on who was doing the measuring. Keith added that good or high performance might be more “good” for different people.
Caroline thought that some elements of performance were not just about the numbers, but about developing projects with less stress and less conflict and Vanessa agreed, saying that performance in the new world included work-life balance. There was discussion about doing more with less and increased efficiency and effectiveness.
Robert suggested that the more balanced approach being discussed might lead to increased use of scorecards, but there was also a view that if organisations missed the numbers, the scorecard was abandoned!
There was a general view that there were lots of questions about the definition of high performance, but Keith also suggested that high performance was an output and that it was the inputs that required definition.
Neil commented that for WCS, which was both a charity and a social enterprise, the definition of high performance culture was a difficult one as he wasn’t sure if one culture would actually cover both parts of the organisation.
Questions were also raised about whether a high performance culture automatically led to high performance, and Mike thought that this was not the case – if the markets were against you, the company doesn’t make any money. Keith agreed and told the story of the Industrial Society – great place to work, bright people, co-operative culture, generally a great place to be – but its market share of training and management consulting was very poor.
Speaking from the opposite perspective, Robert said that doorstep delivery had been kept going by taking 10% of costs out of it every year and in terms of managing decline, the performance of the organisation was brilliant – but it was hardly a great place to work.
Chris added his story of Equitable Life, an operationally brilliant organisation, but a mistake at the top level in the business strategy had led to its decline – nothing to do with either the people or the culture.
Karen wondered if high performance was dependent not only on culture, but strategy and the group developed a potential matrix – good culture, good strategy = high growth; good culture, poor strategy = slow decline; good strategy, poor culture = slow growth (?); poor strategy and poor culture = rapid decline. (copyright pending!)
Gary summarised that there were queries about sustainability, and timescale; that market characteristics needed to be taken into consideration, particularly given that performance might mean managing decline; and that performance may change definition depending on what’s being measured and who is doing the measuring. He also reiterated that we spend a lot of time, energy and money investing in balanced scorecards only to dump them if profits aren’t delivered. He also referred to the doorstep delivery example provided by Robert and said that he has been involved in cost cutting, but wanted always to ask the question – “what now?”.
Chris commented about some Work Foundation research which indicated that if companies want to move from poor performance to average performance, the focus was on the top team. If companies wanted to get from average to good performance, everyone was involved.
A number of people mentioned high performing organisations which don’t perform so well when merged with other high performance companies. Vanessa said that the merger of BOC and Linde has been traumatic for the organisations because of the different cultural styles – but both had been classed as high performing organisations. Likewise, Robert spoke about AP Muller and Maersk, where despite the same core business of shipping and being high performance organisations, AP Muller haemorrhaged staff after they merged. Chris commented that French companies had a very different philosophy from those in the UK, making high performance difficult in cross- Channel mergers and Mike thought that one of Chaucer’s strengths was in deciding to consciously keep the different sites of the company – London and Whitstable – separate, avoiding any culture clashes.
Chris wondered whether this would have implications for assessing management performance….
Finally moving on to the next slide , Gary commented that there was lots of complexity, and that both qualitative and quantitive measures would be needed to assess performance. A number of comments were made about the quote on this slide; some slight amusement that the soft attitudes of employees were described as “irrational”. Gary said that he considered In Search of Excellence to be important as it ascribed considerable importance to the people and their feelings in the organisation and noted the central premise of their book that not only were the feelings and emotions of employees open to management manipulation, but that a high performing culture was an “excellent” culture.
Gary gave a brief reminder of the characteristics of “Excellent” companies. Peters and Waterman examined 43 of Fortune 500's top performing companies. They started with a list of 62 of the best performing McKinsey clients and then applied performance measures to weed out what they thought to be the weaker companies. General Electric was one of the casualties which failed to make the cut.
Chris commented that the public sector seems to have moved away from managing their organisations like this, preferring a more structured, restricted approach, although Vanessa thought that from her experience, working in the public sector was chaos! Control, she thought, was provided by external bodies such as the Audit Office. Keith pointed out that we all make the assumption that people who work in the public sector are public minded – and that this was NOT the case, in the majority of cases.
Chris thought that there might be two (or more) value sets at work; basic human values, professional values and the organisational values; Mike wasn’t quite so sure – he thought that at least 50% of the people he worked with weren’t passionate about insurance.
Gary outlined the main academic issues with the idea of an excellent culture. Karen also pointed out that there were various academic commentators who had moral and ethical issues with the idea of manipulating employee values for corporate performance.
Graham Salaman’s view, supported by Gary, is that whether or not we call it “culture” change, or even high performance culture change, any change requires some manipulation of employee attitudes.
Chris noted the use of the word “corporate” in the slide, and that we make the assumption that it is a culture shared by all of the corporation and Gary agreed – if you could describe it, it would be very bland and abstract, as every part of the organisation would have their own version of it, characterised by the work they did.
Gary noted that looking at Salaman’s point of view, the implications were very serious, some of the group thought them a bit depressing. Gary added that there was the strong implication that management’s role was to force (Salaman’s word) employees to deliver the strategy, regardless of what it is, and with little, if any, input to it. Gary felt that at best, the outcome would be compliance from the majority of employees and resigned compliance from the rest.
Moving on, Gary gave the thoughts of fe3. We can’t ignore the subject of corporate culture because of its theoretical and empirical shortcomings, nor wait until something better comes along – it’s a key issue now. There are obvious ethical issues in manipulating employee subjectivity, so our preferred method is to try and develop shared values (for the organisation and the employees), engaging people emotionally and being sufficiently explicit so that people know what it is they’re buying in to. Gary’s thought is that high performance starts with the top team, but can be broken down into team units throughout the organisation.
Chris commented that teams within an organisation are interdependent – so the team leader belongs to another team, which “spreads” the expectations and understanding of what’s needed. Robert commented that this would require a broad understanding, but give people the flexibility and Gary agreed, saying that one size certainly doesn’t fit all; sales and manufacturing cultures are likely to be very different.
Gary explained that the characteristics listed in this slide came Steve Buchholz and Tim Roth and that the subject headings have proved very useful in generating discussion in team meetings. Karen said that she thought the point on “common purpose” was very important, given that many senior management teams didn’t KNOW what they were supposed to do as a team – they concentrated on their functional duties. Robert said that his senior management team had just been through a process to agree a common purpose, but that they hadn’t had one before.
Keith thought that the characteristics appeared similar to those required for creating a learning organisation – especially number 8. Caroline commented that these were very “task-y” but that they didn’t really capture the essence of how these things would create high performance. Gary explained that these were used to prompt discussion, rather than a tick-box exercise which would guarantee high performance.
Chris made the comment that he thought there was no compensation for the environment and noted that when his company moved so that everyone was together, all of these elements improved – so is it only possible when people are together? Karen posed the question what then, about people who work from home, or are on the road for large chunks of time? Does culture require a building? Vanessa and Robert disagreed, but that you have to work harder at it, and Robert suggested that the core purpose of a team needed to be bigger. He also said that roundsmen showed more identification with their depot (which they saw twice a day) than the people who worked in the manufacturing units and were based there all the time!
Reflections at the end of the session: